Central America

Department:

Technical Cooperation

Project Name:

Capability Enhancement in Using Geographic Information Systems in Central America—Nicaragua

Project Description:

Central American countries, frequently faced with natural disasters, lack effective management and planning capacity over vast areas of land, affecting the region’s sustainable development. There is an urgent need to use technology to better effect, which would assist government decision-making in preventing and mitigating natural disasters, managing land and using natural resources sustainably.
Given Taiwan’s use of satellite technology and associated tools, authorities in Nicaragua, Honduras and El Salvador have all sought to cooperate with Taiwan based on this need, hoping to enhance governance capacity through this project via the introduction geographic information systems (GIS) technology. Since cooperation among countries with common needs can save costs through the sharing of resources, the project will adopt a regionwide approach toward implementation, developing first on a common basis before formulating further plans on the basis of individual countries’ national development priorities.
Project appraisal found that the main challenge to the introduction of GIS applications to Nicaragua, Honduras and El Salvador is their lack of access to satellite imaging and lack of technical capacity. Consequently, these three countries have no way of managing cases of land use and change, and are unable to quickly and effectively react during the aftermath of natural disasters, which would otherwise allow them to reduce the impact of such events and subsequent losses.
In assisting cooperating countries to utilize GIS effectively and thereby upgrade the efficiency of government administration, the main components of this project will include: (1) strengthening environmental monitoring of key protected areas and nature reserves, and providing satellite imaging so that cooperating countries are able to understand changes to the state of land; (2) fostering human resources with technical capacity in GIS and transferring satellite imaging applications and technology to cooperating countries; and (3) in accordance with the differing needs of the cooperating countries, utilize satellite imaging in monitoring water quality (Nicaragua) and environmental management (Honduras), and in carrying out land use planning (El Salvador).

Region:

Central America

Implementation Start Date:

2014/1/1

Implementation End Date:

2016/12/31

Source of Funding:

Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Republic of China (Taiwan)

Project Objectives:

By providing access to satellite imaging and change-point analysis, the project will assist the relevant units in Central American partner countries to expand GIS applications, allowing such units to achieve their goal of integrating mapping data. The specific objectives of the project are as follows:1.Strengthen environmental monitoring systems for protected areas or key monitoring areas within Central America.2.Foster GIS and related human resources, improving skills relating to the application of satellite imaging.3.Enhance the use of satellite imaging in carrying out environmental impact analysis.4.Enhance the capacity of disaster prevention systems at a national level.

Executing Agency:

1.TaiwanICDF 2.Nicaraguan Institute of Territorial Studies, INETER (Nicaragua)3.National Environmental Information System - Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources, MARENA-SINIA (Nicaragua)4.Center for Research in Water Resources Nicaragua / National Autonomous University of Nicaragua, UNAN-CIRA (Nicaragua)5.Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry (MAF)

Project Performance:

1.Completed 81 areas land use change and reported 147 change points over a monitoring area of 27,264 km²;2.5 emergency monitoring cases are completed; 3.4 times with 120 hours GIS/RS training courses were completed and 181 participants attended;4.Completion of 32 internet meetings;5.Completion of 41 technical and project reports.